So, one of my guilty pleasures is the huge pop/rock band OneRepublic. I enjoyed some of their music growing up, but I never really loved them until I saw them live. That experience impressed upon me their surprising musicianship and the depth of Ryan Tedder's songwriting talent. When their most recent album, Oh My My, came out, I eventually gave in and bought it. It's not my usual style, featuring quite a bit of dance/pop tunes, but I actually enjoyed it very much.
One song especially interested me, track 11 entitled "Human." OneRepublic is no stranger to songs with spiritual/religious content, but their last few albums seem to be demonstrating a cooling of their religious zeal. This song demonstrates both their continued religiosity and the ambiguity thereof, as the lyrics show a belief in God but a reluctance to define much about who He is or what He requires of us.
Analyzing the spiritual state of Ryan Tedder is not my goal here today. What I really want to note is how he accidentally stumbled across the profundity of the hypostatic union of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The chorus features God asking, "How does it feel to be human/If I could for one day I just might do it." The rest of the song expresses, perhaps in a humanistic way, the unexpected benefits of frailty and vulnerability. Here's the thing: God did become a human! Philippians 2 tells us that Jesus, "though he was in the form of God...emptied himself by...being born in the likeness of men." Imagine that! He, whose image we bear, humbled Himself and bore our image!
We have to be careful when discussing the details of the Trinity, but we should never fail to marvel at the fact that the Second Person of the Trinity (as opposed to the Father and the Spirit) walked on the face of this Earth! God, in a sense, experienced what it was to be human! The author of Hebrews draws comfort from this fact, noting that our Savior "was made like his brothers in every respect" so that He could "sympathize with our weaknesses." Jesus was tired. Jesus was hungry. Jesus Christ, the giver of the Law, was tempted! How unfathomable! You can make arguments about only the human nature of Jesus experiencing these things, but at some point we simply have to confess the limitations of systematic theology and resort to praising God. Paul expressed it this way in 1 Timothy 3:16:
One song especially interested me, track 11 entitled "Human." OneRepublic is no stranger to songs with spiritual/religious content, but their last few albums seem to be demonstrating a cooling of their religious zeal. This song demonstrates both their continued religiosity and the ambiguity thereof, as the lyrics show a belief in God but a reluctance to define much about who He is or what He requires of us.
Analyzing the spiritual state of Ryan Tedder is not my goal here today. What I really want to note is how he accidentally stumbled across the profundity of the hypostatic union of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The chorus features God asking, "How does it feel to be human/If I could for one day I just might do it." The rest of the song expresses, perhaps in a humanistic way, the unexpected benefits of frailty and vulnerability. Here's the thing: God did become a human! Philippians 2 tells us that Jesus, "though he was in the form of God...emptied himself by...being born in the likeness of men." Imagine that! He, whose image we bear, humbled Himself and bore our image!
We have to be careful when discussing the details of the Trinity, but we should never fail to marvel at the fact that the Second Person of the Trinity (as opposed to the Father and the Spirit) walked on the face of this Earth! God, in a sense, experienced what it was to be human! The author of Hebrews draws comfort from this fact, noting that our Savior "was made like his brothers in every respect" so that He could "sympathize with our weaknesses." Jesus was tired. Jesus was hungry. Jesus Christ, the giver of the Law, was tempted! How unfathomable! You can make arguments about only the human nature of Jesus experiencing these things, but at some point we simply have to confess the limitations of systematic theology and resort to praising God. Paul expressed it this way in 1 Timothy 3:16:
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.Paul's consideration of the Person and Work of Christ leaves him with nothing else to do but to proclaim the wonders of this mystery. Theologians have thrown many gallons of ink at the inner workings of the Trinity and the hypostatic union (the union of two natures in Christ's person), but they have to yet to (and never will) plumb the depths of that mystery. We can and should observe and categorize what we find revealed in Scripture in this regard, but we will never truly be able to define how God and man (two natures) coexist in the person (singular) of Jesus Christ. I like how Bruce Shelley put it:
The fourth- and fifth-century debates about the meaning of the incarnation were not aimed at an explanation of Christ. These Christians knew that Jesus Christ defies explanation because he fits no class. He is unique. The great merit of the creeds is that they left the mystery intact.I don't know what Ryan Tedder believes. I don't know if he holds to the traditional doctrines of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ, but he, perhaps unintentionally, echoed a profound Biblical truth. God, the transcendent and wholly-other God, came to the Earth in the form of the God-man, the One we call Jesus Christ. That God-man lived, suffered, and died. None of this was because God owed us a debt or due to any sort of merit we might have, but was in every way because of God's love and grace. How does it feel to be human? God knows.
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